


i am unbreakable but it looks like i could, sometime soon

by elvesarebad



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied Mind Control, Non-Consensual Touching, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvesarebad/pseuds/elvesarebad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>set directly after party guessed (2x09), during fury (2x10), lydia’s pov; lydia tells peter to get the fuck out of her house and sets about cleaning it</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am unbreakable but it looks like i could, sometime soon

The mirror in her bedroom is still broken. Her mother hasn’t had time to have it fixed. Lydia watches her face split into infinity as she draws closer. She slides her fingers over the cracks, down the entire length of the mirror. Her breathing comes slow and shaky; her fingers tremble as she gazes at them. She’s in need of a manicure, she notices as though from far, far away. She looks up at her faces in the mirror. They are pale and drawn, like she hasn’t slept in a month (she hasn’t, at least not peacefully). There are dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and she feels as if any second now she’ll shatter like the glass in the mirror when her fists had pummelled it, trying to rid herself of Peter’s face. Except there’d be too many pieces for anyone to ever put her back together again. She’s shaking so hard it does seem like a possibility, like her body’s already trying to make it happen. She knows – she _thinks_ she knows (and she’d never been unsure of herself, of her mind, of her intellect, before Peter came and broke her) – that it’s not possible but it _feels_ like it will happen, like it’s inevitable that this is how it would end.

The floor creaks behind her and she knows it’s Peter (who else would it be? No one else cares). He did it on purpose, to reveal his presence to her. She knows he could have appeared as silently as death if he wanted to. Her body still shakes but now there’s a tension in her shoulders. She hopes he won’t touch her this time. Her skin always wants to shrivel away as his fingers graze her cheek, and her bones want to pull themselves apart just to get away from his touch. Her hands are shaking even worse than they were but she’s able to dig her fingers into a tiny gap between the shards of glass. Turning around means having to look at him so she concentrates on excavating the shard as though her life depends on it – fingernails pulling back enough that it feels as though they’ll snap off; the muscles in her arms tense although she’s shaking even more than she was – and maybe it does.

Behind her, she hears Peter sit on her bed. She can see him in the mirror now, an infinite number of Peters smoothing the covers next to him, watching her with that lazy, intense gaze she’s come to know so well. She gives the shard she’s trying to free one last tug and it comes loose, little pieces of glass tinkling as they fall onto her dresser. Now there’s one less Peter in the mirror but he’s still behind her. She stares at him in the mirror and he gazes back at her, calm and collected, as though he could do this all night.

Lydia’s hand tightens around the shard of glass. It slices into her palm, her blood running hot over her skin. Some of it drips onto the carpet, the sound of it somehow even louder than her harsh breathing. Her hands shake, the shard slicing deeper unlike it’s like it becomes an extension of her, a weapon she can use (and she’d never thought she would ever use a weapon that wasn’t her brain).

“You’ve hurt yourself,” Peter says quietly. He sounds surprised, like he doesn’t understand why she’d do something like that. His voice makes her flinch but she makes herself turn around, hand still gripped tight around the glass shard. He doesn’t even glance at it, his gaze focused on her face. She hates it, as though it’s his fingers sliding over her skin and not his eyes. Her eyes skitter away from his face until she’s looking at a space just above his left shoulder.

“Get out,” she says. Her voice is soft and it trembles as though she’s unsure of herself. She ducks her head, a curtain of hair falling to shield her face. It doesn’t stop him from looking at her but it means she doesn’t have to see his face. “Get out.” She hesitates and then peers out from behind her hair. “Please,” she whispers, trying to put as much desperation in her voice as she can. It’s not hard.

Peter stands up and she immediately flinches away, crashing into her dresser. Some of her make-up falls to the floor but she doesn’t pay it any attention. Peter does. He titters, as though he expected more of her, and goes to pick them up. She tries to move away from him without actually moving. If she can take up as small a space as possible perhaps she could disappear entirely.

Peter smiles at her as he places the jars of face cream carefully back onto her dresser. He’s so close now, only a whisper of space between them, and she wants to pull back, pull away, and get as far away as possible. She tries to pull herself together, tries to stop herself from shaking because if she keeps it up she’ll be the one initiating contact. Tightening her hand around the shard sends a lightning bolt of pain through her, clearing her mind for a second. She gasps just a little, she can’t help it.

Peter brushes her hair aside and she turns her face away, her skin attempting to crawl away from his touch. “Get out,” she says again. Peter pays her words as much attention as he’d done before. He grasps her shoulders and turns her toward him, to face the mirror again. Their reflections continue on into infinity but in every one her eyes are wide and full of fear. She licks her lips and says it again.

“Get out.”

His hands cup her face, turning her to look at him. “Please,” she whispers, terror making the word almost indecipherable. He stares down at her, still smiling, unaware that the very blood in her veins tries to get away from his touch. Or perhaps he knows and simply does not care.

“Please,” Lydia says again, and she’s begging now. Her free hand scrabbles at his shirt, twisting the fabric around her fingers. “ _Please_.” Her other hand loosens its grip on the shard, the pain as it slides out of her palm almost blinding.

Peter strokes her face. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, as though it could ever be okay.

Her hand tightens around the shard of glass and she shoves it up and into him. The look of surprise on his face is incredibly satisfying, as is the feel of the shard tearing through his flesh, his blood spurting over her fingers and mixing with her own. Her fingers slip-slide in their blood but she doesn’t let go. Instead she tightens her grip and slices up until she feels it stopped by what she assumes is a rib. Peter makes a thick gurgling noise and when she looks at him, blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth, down his chin. She twists the shard in deeper, hopes what she just felt was the shard slicing through several intestine. It’s so easy, like she’s cutting through partially melted butter. She thinks he might have underestimated her. A lot of people do that but it’s surprising in him since he’s been in her mind for so long.

Peter’s eyes are wide and afraid now, like hers had been a moment ago (she knows they aren’t now). She’s no longer shaking, as though stabbing him had focused her. Leaning into him, she whispers in his ear, “Get out.”

Lydia twists the shard again, snarling in his ear. “Get out, get out, get out, GET OUT!”

She pulls the shard out and pushes him away, toward the door. “GET OUT!” she screams after him. She chases him down the hall, runs after him as he stumbles down the stairs, clutching his belly like he’s trying to keep his insides to stay where they are and not fall out and onto the floor. He runs out the open front door as she throws the shard at him. It doesn’t hit him, just hits the floor near his feet, shattering on impact. The sound makes him jump, makes him scream, and Lydia can’t help but laugh. It’s not a nice laugh, nor does it sound particularly sane, but she can’t stop, not when she sees the terrified look he gives her over his shoulder, his face pale and yellow, a mix of moonlight and streetlight, fear and cowardice. Her laugh gets louder as he gets further away, she’s shaking so much from the force of it she has to clutch at the doorframe to keep herself upright. Without her permission, her body slowly slides to the ground and she sits there, laughter slowly dying out, replaced by hiccups and what she’s not surprised are sobs. And she’s shaking again, will she ever stop shaking or will she finally shatter into a million pieces, finally break apart physically like she’s started to think she is psychologically.

She knows, though, that if she breaks now, Peter will have won.

Lydia picks herself up, using the doorframe as a crutch because her legs are shaking enough that she thinks they won’t hold her weight. She stands there for what seems like hours, eyes closed, acutely aware of how loud her heart is beating. Eventually she thinks she’s able to walk without falling down and she takes a few steps in the direction of the kitchen, where the first aid kit is.

That’s when she notices how trashed her house is. She knows – remembers through a haze – that outside, near the pool, it’s even worse. It helps, somehow, to know this, to know that there’s something she can do that’s not just shaking til she breaks completely. But first things first, she needs to cleans herself up, bandage her hand where it was sliced by the shard, before she can clean the house up. She turns and closes the front door, noting that some of their neighbours have turned on their lights, probably woken by her screams. She hopes they don’t tell her mother, she doesn’t need the endless questions right now.

In the kitchen, she takes her dress off until she’s standing in nothing but her strapless bra, panties, and her heels. It’s easier that way. The blue of the dress, already dark, is now almost black with blood and dirt, completely ruined unless her mother knows some laundry secret that will save it. She washes her hands in the sink, numbly watching the blood slide off, turning pink as it goes down the drain. Grabbing the first aid kit from the top shelf, she gets the disinfectant out and rubs it over the cuts, the feel of its sharp sting making her wince but somehow also making her feel alive for the first time in months. After that, she wraps a bandage around her hand, tight but not too tight. Her hand throbs but it’s easy to ignore for the moment. She slips off her heels and cleans the mud off the bottom of them in the sink, one handed, trying to keep the bandages from getting wet. Her feet feel much better without her feels on and she wiggles her toes absently. Gazing at her heels, she realises belatedly that she must have tracked mud throughout the house. She sighs, bowing her head. That’s going to be hard to get out of the carpet.

Grabbing the carpet cleaner and some old towels from the laundry, she heads up the stairs to her room and places her heels with the rest of them. She gets down on her knees and examines the mud in the carpet. There’s more where Peter had stood. She growls a little in frustration as she pushes her hair out of her face, tying it back.

It’s not that hard, she finds, and it keeps her mind off dangerous topics. She has to fetch more rags from the laundry several times, especially when she heads out into the hallway and then down the stairs. Between the stairs and the hallway she spots little grooves in the wood pannelling as though an animal’s claws had gougged there. She wonders if it was Peter. They’re small enough that she doesn’t think her mother will notice so she puts them from her mind. She vacuums up there afterwards, since she thinks it’ll be easier than doing it all at once.

Cleaning downstairs means getting the rubbish bags from underneath the sink. There are several paper cups strewn over the floor and the furniture, along with paper plates and half eaten pizza and other foods she doesn’t want to hazard a guess at. She slides her unbandaged hand in a pink cleaning glove and starts picking the food and rubbish off the floor, throwing it into the rubbish bag she holds with her bandaged hand, which is also gloved even though it hurt to do that. Every now and then she grips the bag too tight and pain lances through her, strong enough that she gasps and stands there swaying until her mind clears and she stops shaking. The pain doesn’t make her feel like she’s alive anymore. Instead it’s like proof she’s survived, but not without being completely changed. Whether the change is good or bad she doesn’t know, only that it’s happened and she has to live with it.

Thankfully it’s only rubbish that makes the downstairs so messy. She ties the second rubbish bag up and puts it with the first, outside near the back door. This time she has no choice but to take in the backyard, since it’s the only place she hasn’t cleaned. It’s not as bad as she thought it would, although she can tell the punch fountain is going to give her a bit of trouble. It helps, though, to watch the wolfsbane punch disappear as she flushes it down the downstairs toilet, the sight giving her a viseral pleasure, making her shiver with delight, like she’s flushing Peter and all the related baggage that came with him down with the punch. The thought makes her smile.

After that, cleaning the vomit from the grass seems like nothing at all. Cleaning the pool is a little bit harder, mostly because she’s never liked cleaning it. Every night after her birthday party, she wonders why they even have a pool when she and her mother rarely, if ever, use it. Then she thinks of summer and muggy days, lazing about on one of the floats, or of hot nights with Jackson, his hands sliding through the water over her face, his mouth on hers. So, maybe they had it for a reason but it saddens her to think things will never be as they were, and that it will be impossible to pretend that they ever could be again.

Finally, it’s all finished. Her cut hand throbs even harder now and she bites her lip, trying to put it out of her mind. There are four rubbish bags near the back door now. She passes them as she heads back inside. The sofa in the living room looks more inviting than it has looked in her entire life. The thought of climbing the stairs to her bedroom makes her tired. Tugging the pink gloves off, wincing as one of them tugs harder at her her bandages than she would have liked, she throws them on the floor and grabs a blanket from the closet. Grabbing several cushions from the other end of the sofa, she bunches them up at one end and lays her head on them, wrapping the blanket tight around her.

Closing her eyes to sleep usually ends in a Peter-induced dream but it occurs to her that now he’s alive and no longer in her head, she can finally sleep peacefully. It takes her half an hour to get to sleep, though, as her throbbing hand and her need to find a more comfortable position to lie in keeps her awake.

Sunlight is just streaming through the closed curtains as she hears the front door open. She hopes it’s her mother, and not Peter returned, but before she can sit up or call out, she yawns and her eyes flutter closed. Sleep claims her.

This time there is no Peter, only cool, sweet darkness. It’s peaceful, just as she expected it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: originally posted on tumblr with these tags: #and then ms. morrell turned up and woke lydia up and told her everything #and she persuaded lydia to go the lacrosse game because something was going to happen that she needed to witness #lydia disagrees; she's already been through enough #all she wants to do is curl up and sleep for a hundred years #but ms. morrell looks at her with those brown eyes full of nothing but truth and sympathy #and lydia sighs because she knows she can't stay in this house forever no matter how much she wants to #and ms. morrell quotes someone who is not winstin churchhill or shakespeare #and then they team up and take over beacon hills or smthg #the end


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